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#20
District 3 Female
Name: Ratchet Park
Age: 12
Score: 6
Odds of Victory: 28-1
Fact: Her district partner Mouse was the only mouse, or rodent of any sort, she didn't fear.
When Ratchet heard the cannon, it was like music to her ears. Way better than the peppy stuff they'd played nonstop on the radio back in the training centre.
Just four more to go and she'd be going home as the youngest victor of the Hunger Games. It had a nice ring to it.
But the thought of seeing her parents and her cousins again? That had the best ring of all.
How long had it been now? How long had she been down in the salt mines? How long had she been in this arena? She'd lost track a while after she finished torturing the boy from 2, however long ago that had been.
Time had lost all of its meaning and would continue to have no meaning until the final cannon went off and those sweet, sweet trumpets began to play.
Ratchet was in no hurry. She had all the time in the world. With her trap ready to go at an instant's notice, she could stay where she was for at least a week if she had to.
People had a habit of underestimating tributes from District 3, and Ratchet had no idea why. Maybe they were just dumb? Brains mattered, and hers were why she'd been able to set up the trap in the first place. The mining digger had contained everything she had needed for the trap, while her backpack contained the rubber gloves for safety.
Let the other tributes live like animals, she'd enjoy some nice electricity to keep herself in comfort until the Games were done.
The trap did a great job of keeping people away from her - it had worked against the girl from 1 at least, why wouldn't it work against the other tributes? - but it left Ratchet with a lot of time.
Too much of it. Like most kids, she didn't like keeping still for long nor the long periods of inactivity. Just because staying put was safe didn't mean she enjoyed it.
The longer she was left alone, the more she thought and lately the little tribute had many things going through her mind.
The fact the corpse of the boy from 2 was still around meant she'd often end up thinking of the murder she had committed. The way she'd tortured and mocked the once mighty killer, laughing at his suffering as he died in agony, practically crying.
Her Pop had always said that revenge wasn't worth it, that it wouldn't make her feel better. But after what the brute had done to Mouse, Ratchet had been unable to resist the urge to do it anyway… and found that her Pop was wrong.
It didn't leave her empty or unsatisfied.
It felt powerful. It made her feel good. It made her feel like she had avenged Mouse.
Maybe, Ratchet thought during the late hours when she was halfway between awake and dreaming, she was just a little bit evil.
She wouldn't do it again. She was satisfied to have paid evil unto evil just the one time, even if she didn't much feel evil for having done so.
Though nobody said she couldn't just kill the remaining tributes nice and quick. They had to die, those were the rules. If her trap was set to its fullest power, Ratchet knew the electricity would cause instant death. No dragging it out whatsoever.
Ratchet just wished she knew who was left at this point. It had been some time since she'd seen another tribute, and even then the only one she had seen was the girl from 1. Who was to say one of those cannons since then hadn't been for her?
Careers or outliers, she'd take them all out with her electrical barrier.
Ratchet knocked back a few gulps of water, wishing she had something to do to pass the time. More specifically, wishing for something harmless. She never had done well with just sitting around and letting the world pass her by. Her escort had referred to it as something called 'ADHD', though Ratchet hadn't a clue what that meant.
It seemed irrelevant right now.
But at least if she thought about that then she wouldn't have to let the hours tick by with thoughts of her family and Mouse stuck in her head.
She sighed. Too late, she was thinking about them all over again.
She missed her Mom and the way she'd cook the best of food even when they didn't have that much to go around, or even food that was in any way fresh or plentiful.
She missed her Pop and the stories he'd tell, stories of life before the Hunger Games and before the Dark Days ever started.
She missed her cousins and all the good times they'd have. Their collaborations for science fairs that often led to a small explosion or the occasional game of 'tease the Peacekeeper'.
Ratchet hid her face behind her knees, refusing to give the Capitol the satisfaction of seeing her tears. They could take her life, but they wouldn't take her tears.
She slapped herself when she began to wonder how they reacted to her torture of the boy from 2. Surely it had been included in full on mandatory viewing.
Ratchet didn't care about the boy, but she cared for her family. Would they have taken an issue? Would they be afraid of her? She felt sick at how it had taken days for her to even think of this.
She'd been too busy setting up her trap and thinking of how Mouse would've been glad for his killer's death, or at least his family would be glad the career boy had died.
Ratchet had always liked Mouse's family and looked up to her babysitter, even if they never tended to agree on little things like 'danger', 'common sense' and 'basic logic'. Now she'd never know what other things they might not agree on.
"If only you'd taken shortcuts with me…" Ratchet whispered into her knees.
Ratchet remained still, head hidden behind her knees and her back against the mining digger, for the next hour. There were no cannons. There were no noises. There wasn't anything.
Then there was a squeak, just a little one. A small rat scampered out of the darkness and right up to Ratchet. It was a harmless creature, really.
Its presence alone was enough for Ratchet to recoil and, using the sword stolen from the boy from 2, impale it in an instant.
"No, no, no! Get away!" Ratchet yelped, kicking the gore that remained of the mouse to the edge of the room. "Back, back!"
It was several minutes before Ratchet was satisfied that the rat was dead and there weren't any more of them coming forth.
It was a few minutes after that when she realised that she had just exposed her phobia to the gamemakers.
As much as Ratchet truly wanted to believe that, this late in the Games, they wouldn't take advantage when they surely had plenty of other stuff planned, she wasn't an idiot. Not usually. Those cruel folks in robes would do whatever they could to make her suffer before she wore that victor crown.
Slowly, Ratchet took hold of the sword and clutched it tightly, ready to fight at the first sign of danger. For several minutes there was nothing but the light hum of the electrical trap and the sound of her own breathing.
Then the rats appeared.
At first they were few and harmless. Just copies of the one she'd already killed. Little things that couldn't cause Ratchet any true harm. She spiked them all with the sword anyway, those that didn't end up scampering themselves into the wires.
Then the big rats arrived. Rodents of sharp teeth, gnarled eyes and echoing squeaks. They never stopped squeaking, not when they knew their prey was near.
Ratchet lunged for the dials of the digging machine, turning up the power of the trap to its threshold. Sparks flew from the wires as electricity coursed through them. The rat mutts, of course, weren't deterred.
Even as they hit the wires and were fried instantly, they kept coming. Even as they saw their filthy brethren die, they kept coming.
They kept coming until, at last, one of them broke through the trap. Scorched by the voltage, the rat wasn't dead and had a craving for flesh.
Ratchet impaled it with her sword, but terror made her slip up. The rat dug its teeth into her shoulder right before it died.
Ratchet's scream echoed through tunnels near and far. Still the rats kept coming.
Ratchet gnawed her sleeve to silence the screams. She ran to where the dead body of the boy from 2 had been left to rot and, over the days since he'd died, became a snack for the occasional rat that would come on by.
Rats were scavengers. They wouldn't be picky about what they ate, oversized mutts or not. The remnants of the swarm left Ratchet alone for the moment, going after the bigger prize.
Rotted or not, meat was meat.
Ratchet didn't waste her chance. With a frenzied, shaky battle cry she swung the sword again and again, slicing away at the hideous mutts until finally… finally… the squeaking ended.
She didn't dare to pause. Still taking deep, frightened wheezes, Ratchet used the pool of water she'd been drinking to clean her wound and, she hoped, get rid of any chance of infection.
She knew she would rather die of thirst than a rat bite.
Looking over the damage to her trap Ratchet knew there was work to do and only so much time to do it. Any of the four tributes out there couldn't heard the battle. Any of them could be on their way already.
No way was there not at least two career tributes amongst them.
Hours passed, Ratchet sniffling and grimacing the entire time, as she did her best to get the trap put back the way it was. The mining digger had enough spare parts within it, barely, but another swarm of rats like that and repair would be impossible.
Ratchet kept the power turned nearly all the way up. She wouldn't give anyone the chance to come close enough next time.
Eventually she nodded off, though not for long. Not after the fright she'd gotten. Any rest was brief and far from peaceful.
Ratchet wished Mouse was still there with her. He'd always been there to shoo away a rodent back home any time once got too close. For all his worry over danger and taking risks, he'd never once had a problem facing a rat on her behalf.
He'd made it look easy.
"I'll be home soon," Ratchet whispered to a camera built into a crack in the wall for perhaps the twelfth time in the past hour.
She yawned. She was tired of surviving. She was tired of being afraid. She was tired of remembering what she did to the boy from 2.
She was tired.
"How much longer until the anthem…" Ratchet muttered, yawning again.
"Probably not even an hour. Though, who knows when we're underground?" said a fairly blank voice.
Ratchet's fatigue was forgotten. She was on alert.
She was cornered like a rat.
The room she'd been hiding within had four exits. One of them was sealed by rubble days earlier, but the rest had a tribute emerging from the shadows. The boy from 1, the girl from 2 and the girl from 4.
They'd boxed her in. Just how long had they known where she was? How long had they travelled through the tunnels to block each escape route?
"Nowhere to run, little one," the girl from 2 cooed out, twirling her spear in her grasp. "You're traaaaapped~."
"The only question is which of us gets to kill you," the boy from 1 added, eagerly getting his scimitar into his left hand. "Just kidding, I'll be the one to do it."
"I wouldn't mind doing it," the girl from 4 said, using her trident as a makeshift post to lean upon. "Maybe killing the youngest tribute will get me to feel something?"
"Get in line, I've not had a chance to kill since the bloodbath," the girl from 2 spat.
"I've not killed yet, you can both shut up and stand back," the boy from 1 sneered.
Despite being trapped, though at least safely behind her electric trap for now, Ratchet couldn't help laughing at the tall boy from 1.
"You haven't killed anyone? It's been almost the whole Games!" Ratchet laughed.
"Shut up!" the boy from 1 snapped. "Every word you say will only make it hurt more."
"I could kill you," Ratchet stammered. "You're not unbeatable."
"You think a little thing like you can fight us, let alone kill us?" the girl from 2 asked, snickering.
"There have been bigger shocks in the arena," the girl from 4 said, considering this.
"No. Not this time," the girl from 2 said, keeping her eyes firmly upon Ratchet.
Ratchet pointed towards the rat-bitten pile of meat that used to be Panzer. The body still had the raven crew cut mostly intact.
The girl from 2 couldn't hold back her horrified gasp.
"I tortured him and turned him into rat food," Ratchet said, shaking a tiny fist. "I could do that to you as well."
"Panzer!" the girl from 2 shrieked. "Oh, you're gonna get it now!"
The girl from 2 moved forth, so angry she'd briefly forgotten the trap. She remembered barely in time, launching herself backwards, though not before suffering a nasty shock to her left arm.
While the girl from 2 kneeled over, wheezing, howling and using her spear for support, the boy from 1 stepped as close as he safely could.
"You can't stay there forever. The gamemakers will flush you out. Even if they don't, that battery won't last forever," the boy from 1 said. "We're patient. I'm patient. If it means making a kill, I'll wait here for a week."
Ratchet looked at the power source of the electric trap, the battery she'd put back into the mining digger. Her heart sank when she saw it was clearly on its last legs. The rat attack and how long she'd had it set so high had pushed it almost to its limit.
There was no way out of this. She knew, deep down, she'd never be able to defeat three trained killers, even if she somehow took one down with her. She'd never be able to escape them when she had no kind of head start.
The Capitol had taken her tears too.
But there was one thing they wouldn't take from her.
Her choices.
If she was going to die, she'd die on her own terms. She'd ensure that nobody got any satisfaction or joy out of it, least of all the lapdogs.
"You suck at killing, you know that?" Ratchet sneered at the boy from 1.
She giggled at the way the blonde boy roared, furious over the mockery.
"Your district partner cried like a little baby when I tortured him. Is that normal for your dumb district?" Ratchet teased the girl from 2.
Just as expected, the girl from 2 snarled and seethed, still kneeling over from the electric shock.
"Your partner was an arrogant blowhard. I'm glad he died before he had a chance to really play the Games," Ratchet told the girl from 4.
"Wave was arrogant," the girl from 4 conceded, shrugging.
There wasn't much time left. The trap was running out of power. Ratchet saw a camera within the mining digger itself. She gave it a sad smile.
"I love you guys," she whispered to her family she knew were watching.
She stood up and took her final breath.
"Bet you guys are all mad and ready for a fight?" Ratchet said, eyeing up the careers.
"Damn right we are. This one's gonna be nice and slow," the boy from 1 hissed.
"Too bad, so sad," Ratchet said, quickly setting her trap to maximum. "Bye!"
Ratchet leapt against the wires of her own trap, instantly frying herself with a mad grin on her face. The cannon boomed only a half-second later, Ratchet's smoking corpse falling to the ground as the battery finally ran out of power.
"NO, NO! No, damn it! Little bitch! Stupid piece of filth!" the boy from 1 screamed, striking his scimitar at everything within his range, his face red like a ripe tomato. "I had her! I was gonna kill her! She was mine!"
"Now she's not anybody's," the girl from 4 noted.
"Shut up Pearl!" the boy from 1 screamed. "You've got loads of kills, easy for you to say!"
"Maybe if you'd been faster in the bloodbath you'd have one as well," the girl from 2 said.
"Maybe if you'd been faster, you'd have more than just one," the boy from 1 snapped.
"Still more than you've gotten," the girl from 2 shrugged.
The bickering continued for some time, during which time Pearl cut her way through the now-harmless wires and looted what supplies Ratchet had on herself.
"There's still one more tribute left," Pearl said. "We should track them down."
"The moment we see them you're both standing back," the boy from 1 warned. "You get in my way, I'll kill you before I get the outlier."
"Whatever, we'll see," the girl from 2 said, limping somewhat after the electric shock.
The boy from 1 and girl from 2 headed down a tunnel at random. Pearl remained behind to look down at Ratchet's still-smoking corpse.
"...Nothing," Pearl noted. "The youngest tribute just killed herself, and I don't feel anything. Huh."
"You coming or what Pearl?" the girl from 2 snapped from halfway down the tunnel.
Pearl knelt to close Ratchet's eyes and then headed off without another word, leaving the tiny tribute's corpse in peace.
In death Ratchet still had a wide grin on her face.
In death Ratchet still held more emotion than Pearl had in her entire life.
Tribute Deceased
Ranking: 5th
Cause of Death: Suicide via her own electric trap
Time Lasted: 11 days, 23 hours, 54 minutes and 14 seconds
The odds weren't in her favour
District 3 Eliminated